Tag Sin

We’re All Little Pharaohs

Todd R 4 Comments

Anyone who knows the story of the Exodus knows who the bad guy is: Pharaoh.  As the leader of Egypt, he is primarily to blame for the enslavement of Israel.  Eventually, through Moses and Aaron, God tells Pharaoh to free the Israelites from slavery, and time and again Pharaoh refuses.  Clearly, Pharaoh is God’s enemy.  However, in his resistance to God, I think Pharaoh fell into some habits any of us could fall into.

First, Pharaoh admitted his need for God only when things were going wrong but shut God out when things were going well.  In Exodus 8:8, Pharaoh asked Moses to “Plead with the LORD to take away the frogs from me and from my people” but once the frogs were gone, Exodus 8:15 tells us that “when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart” and refused to do God’s will.  The same thing happens in chapter 9, during the plague of the hail.  Seeing the destruction caused by the hail, Pharaoh says “Plead with the LORD, for there has been enough of God’s thunder and hail” in verse 28, but in verse 34, “when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart.”

Photo by Alex Azabache on Unsplash

Next, Pharaoh repeatedly negotiated with God to define the scope of His influence.  Faced with the plague of flies, Pharoah said to Moses and Aaron “Go, sacrifice to your God within the land.”[1]  But staying “in the land” was not what God wanted His people to do.  In response to the plague of locusts, Pharoah said “the men among you” could leave and worship God, but he wouldn’t let the “little ones”[2] go.  Also, after the plague of darkness, Pharoah said “Go, serve the LORD; your little ones also may go with you; only let your flocks and your herds remain behind.”[3]  In these 3 responses, Pharaoh insisted on limits to where the people should worship, which people should worship, and what they could (and couldn’t) use in worship.

Third, Pharaoh also tried to limit the scope of his own sin, and which sins he would be accountable to God for.  In Exodus 9:27, Pharaoh said, “this time I have sinned” and in 10:17 said “forgive my sin, please, only this once.”  In reality Pharaoh was sinning every time he refused to listen to God, but he wasn’t willing to admit that.  He only admitted a minority of the times he disobeyed.

If you’re like me, this all might sound familiar.  Often our prayers are more fervent and sincere when we need help than they are when we have something to praise God for, or when times are good.  Often, we allow God to govern some parts of our life, but we keep other parts for ourselves, to do what we want with.  Also, we often only admit some of our sins and choose which ones to care about.  We’re all a bit like Pharaoh, the bad guy in the Exodus story.

Fortunately for us, we have something else in common with Pharaoh: the true, Almighty God will defeat all of the “gods” we follow.  Every single one.  Behind the battle between Moses and Pharaoh was a contest between our God and Pharaoh’s gods.  As the Life Application Study Bible notes: “As each gloomy plague descended upon the land, the Egyptian people realized how powerless their own gods were to stop it. Hapi, the god of the Nile River, could not prevent the waters from turning to blood. Hathor, the crafty cow-goddess, was helpless as Egyptian livestock died in droves. Amon-Re, the sun-god and chief of the Egyptian gods, could not stop an eerie darkness from covering the land for three full days.”

When we choose not to obey God, we harden our hearts against Him and follow the “gods” we choose for ourselves, but God will ultimately defeat them all.  God’s purpose in saving us is to deliver us from all other gods, as He delivered Israel from Egypt.  He will deliver us from our slavery to every sin that binds us and make us not follow Him wholeheartedly.

We may be more like Pharaoh than we’d like to admit, but the Pharaoh in us has been killed, nailed to the cross with Jesus. When we reach heaven, all of our other “gods” will be gone and we will be perfected in our obedience to the one, true God, for our good and for His glory!

That’s a deliverance worth looking forward to and praising God for!

Amen.

[1] Exodus 8:25
[2] Exodus 10:10-11
[3] Exodus 10:24

There’s a Place for Us – Psalms of Ascent #3

Todd R 3 Comments

Fellow travelers,

Today we come back to a weekly series on the Psalms of Ascent, a group of 15 Psalms used as a liturgy for Jews in ancient Israel traveling to Jerusalem for feasts.  Previously I wrote: “To today’s Christian, the Psalms of Ascent remind us not only of our need for salvation apart from law, but they prepare us to regularly contemplate His provision to accomplish that salvation.”  Psalm 119 praises God’s law, but the following Psalms let us know that the law cannot deliver salvation.

The first Psalm of Ascent, Psalm 120, picks up from verse 136 of Psalm 119: “My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law,” but it also starts where the pilgrimage starts geographically.  The full Psalm 120 is:

“A Song of Ascents.

In my distress I called to the LORD,
            and he answered me.
Deliver me, O LORD,
            from lying lips,
            from a deceitful tongue.

What shall be given to you,
            and what more shall be done to you,
            you deceitful tongue?
A warrior’s sharp arrows,
            with glowing coals of the broom tree!

Woe to me, that I sojourn in Meshech,
            that I dwell among the tents of Kedar!
Too long have I had my dwelling
            among those who hate peace.
I am for peace,
            but when I speak, they are for war!”

Each person traveling to Jerusalem came from a different place.  Meshech was in the far north; Kedar in the far southeast.  The Psalmist does not live in either place, but the picture is that the same problems exist everywhere.  Everyone lives among people with lying lips, a deceitful tongue, and who hate peace.  Each of us in our own way are such people.  In verse 3 the Psalmist is frustrated about what to do about this: “what more shall be done to you, you deceitful tongue?”  The next verse says that force or coercion won’t solve the problem.  It must be solved internally because mankind is fundamentally broken.  Society isn’t the cause of the problem, but an outcome of the problem, and we are frustrated with it.

However, those following the familiar liturgy of these Psalms would know that this frustration is only the beginning of their preparation to worship in Jerusalem.  The place we all live – this entire creation – is groaning for a solution, a way out, and struggling to find it.  All of mankind is in this boat together, but we’re “gonna need a bigger boat.”  The pilgrimage begins with knowing we have a need that we can’t satisfy ourselves.

On their days- or weeks-long journeys to Jerusalem these pilgrims had to bring the baggage from their home lives with them – literally and figuratively.  They certainly lied to and fought with each other on the way.  The trip lasted too long for them to pretend.  Their baggage was visible to all, and they couldn’t make the trip without it.  But they went.  In today’s church, do we go to a place that is full of “good” people, however we define that?  No, we go to a place with people just like us.  We begin as sinners among sinners, from Meshech to Kedar, but we long for a better place.

If you are in distress, call out to the LORD for a place of peace, not just for eternity but for your journey to it.  The church is “called out” to both places.  The journey is worth it.

Coda
The title of this post, if you haven’t already guessed, comes from the musical West Side Story.  The song is about the love between Tony and Maria, members of rival ethnic groups that insist on fighting even though they aren’t sure why.  Therefore, Tony and Maria long for a place where the world’s hate doesn’t tear them apart.

In more ways than one, the sentiments of the song echo the last verses of today’s Psalm:

“Too long have I had my dwelling among those who hate peace.
I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war!”

Here is the song from the 1961 West Side Story film:

This post continues a series on the Psalms of Ascent. To start at the beginning, click here, and for the next post click here.

Minding Our Own Business

Todd R 1 Comment

Have you heard the term “virtue signaling”?  The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “the act or practice of conspicuously displaying one’s awareness of and attentiveness to political issues, matters of social and racial justice, etc., especially instead of taking effective action.”  The phrase seems like it’s been around a long time, but the first use of it may have been as recent as 2013.[1]

Maybe the words “virtue signaling” are new, but the idea is at least as old as the Bible.  In chapter 26, verses 6-13 of Matthew’s gospel, he tells the story of a woman who came to Jesus with “an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment” which she poured on Jesus’ head in front of the disciples.  In Jesus’ view “she has done a beautiful thing to me…to prepare me for burial.”  But the disciples didn’t see it the same way Jesus did.  They indignantly said “Why this waste?  For this [ointment] could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor.”

Jesus responded how it was “a beautiful thing”, but also made another comment that made it clear the disciples were virtue signaling.  He told them not to “trouble the woman.”  “For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.”  I think Jesus had at least 3 points in this phrase, related to virtue signaling.

The first is that knowing what to do isn’t enough.  In fact, it just increases our responsibility.  James 4:17 says: “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”  Although the disciples knew that giving to the poor was good, in this case were more concerned about sharing that knowledge than about using it.  Today, we might call such people virtue signalers, but the Bible calls them “busybodies” and “meddlers”[2]  People who go from person to person evaluating and criticizing their work instead of minding their own responsibilities.  These people are common on social media.

Second, that there is always an opportunity to help the poor – they always will exist and aren’t hard to find – and each disciple surely missed opportunities every day.  On what basis could they pick on someone else’s failure to help the poor?  By criticizing the woman, they revealed that virtue signaling was more important to them than actually being virtuous.

Photo by Guillaume de Germain on Unsplash

The last point is that service flows from worship, not the other way around.  When we worship Jesus, the ultimate servant, our own ability to sincerely serve others increases as a result.  The woman with the ointment knew this may be the only opportunity to anoint Jesus for burial, and knew she shouldn’t miss it.  On the other hand, the disciples wanted Jesus to punish the woman when they should have been minding their own business.  An internal posture of worship may be the best antidote to hypocrisy and the temptation to merely signal virtue.

The phrase “mind your own business” usually is said to someone we want to leave us alone, but the words actually mean that we should consider our own activities and motives more important than the policing of other people’s activities and motives.  We “always have the poor” with us and fall far short of the standard we need to meet to judge other people’s use of resources.

When we all stand before God in judgment, Jesus will tell the blessed: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’”  In other words, the blessed minded their own business instead of just criticizing others (virtue signaling).  Jesus notices when we take effective action and doesn’t care much about our opinions of others’ effectiveness.

Therefore, pray that we can all mind our own business, in worshipful service, “for you always have the poor with you,” and thank God for His forgiveness, because I know I don’t mind my own business nearly as often as I should.  Sometimes I just blog about it.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/virtue signaling
[2] 1 Timothy 5:13; 1 Peter 4:15

The Traps of the Wicked

Todd R 2 Comments

The world is, unfortunately, full of people who seek to get other people in trouble, and this has been true for millennia.  Far back in Old Testament history, King David wrote in Psalm 140:4-5:

“Guard me, O LORD, from the hands of the wicked;
            preserve me from violent men,
            who have planned to trip up my feet.
The arrogant have hidden a trap for me,
            and with cords they have spread a net;
            beside the way they have set snares for me. Selah”

When David wrote this, he was probably describing immediate, physical threats against him, but when I read verse 5 it sounds like many obstacles Christians currently face.  Every day, we encounter traps put in front of us, and David’s Psalm has many applications.

What about irresponsible news coverage, which too often includes inappropriate opinions and suggestions about how we should think or act?  We could pray, “Guard me, O LORD, against putting my faith in falsehoods.”  Or “Guard me, O LORD, against temptation to hate my enemy.”  Or “Guard me, O LORD, from putting aside the work you have for me to do to fight battles that aren’t mine.”

Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay

Also, the internet is a dangerous place.  Many websites use sexual images to get our attention, and in some cases if we even stop for a second to stop scrolling and look, those websites take that as interest and show us more of the same.  We could pray “Guard me, O LORD, when websites ‘have hidden a trap for me, and with cords they have spread a net’”. Other websites use misleading and provocative headlines to pull us away from what we intended to look at.  “Guard me, O LORD, against click bait that leads me where I should not go, and that makes me spend my time unwisely.”

Back to the Psalm, note that in verse 5 David describes threats as being “beside the way,” meaning they are off the main path we should travel.  The traps may be hidden off the side of the road with bait trying to lure us aside to an ambush.  Therefore, the key is to stay on the road.  Proverbs 1:17 says “For in vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird.”  Even birds, if they see a trap, will know to avoid it.  Yet people don’t seem to be as wise, or else they wouldn’t fall for click bait and other temptations.

One of the best ways to stay away from those who “have planned to trip up my feet” is to stay busy doing good things.  Samuel Johnson wrote: “If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.”  He knew temptation is most powerful when we are alone with nothing to do, which applies to much of our time online.  I try to use writing as a way to stay busy when solitary, but that doesn’t always work for me and might not work at all for others.

Staying on the right path, we avoid snares and traps, which are near, but not on, the true way.  Once we allow temptation to move us a little, we often find it has moved us a lot, and into a trap.

What can we all do to avoid the traps of the wicked?

“Guard me, O LORD, from the hands of the wicked;
            preserve me from violent men,
            who have planned to trip up my feet.”

God is at Hand

Todd R 1 Comment

The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah lived in a time full of false prophets, where the true word of God was rarely heard.  It was also a time where idolatry and sin ran wild among the people of Judah, Jeremiah’s audience, a nation headed for destruction by Babylon, God’s chosen agent to discipline them.  Yet the false prophets told the people: “You shall not see the sword, nor shall you have famine, but I will give you assured peace in this place.’”[1]  Later, “They say continually to those who despise the word of the LORD, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No disaster shall come upon you.’”[2]

These false prophets were essentially telling the people they can do whatever they want, so they don’t need a savior since God was not going to judge them.   The false prophets also said that the people don’t need God as Lord, since there would be no negative consequences no matter what they chose to do.

Jeremiah fearlessly confronts these prophets and worked hard to get the people to take him seriously.  At one point, God tells Jeremiah to proclaim: “Am I a God at hand, declares the LORD, and not a God far away?”[3]  With this question, the LORD lets the people know that they can’t just set him aside as if He doesn’t exist.  While God is a God of love, He is also a God of justice, and sin will not be ignored.

Both the Old and New Testaments warn that those who ignore God can infect the broader population.  In Deuteronomy 29:18-19, Moses wrote: “Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the LORD our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.’ This will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry alike.”  [emphasis mine]. The whole church, the “moist and dry alike” can suffer from the influence of members who cast God aside as irrelevant or inconvenient.  People who stubbornly insist on their own way.

The New Testament picks up the “root” image from Deuteronomy in Hebrews 12:15 – “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled”. This verse is in the context of God’s discipline, of understanding that when He judges His own people, it is not a final judgement, but one that is meant to refine them and make them holy.  But it is also a reminder that we need to accept God as Lord, by His grace, in order for Him to be our Savior.

Like the false prophets of Jeremiah’s day, modern preachers can also teach that we don’t need Jesus as Lord and Savior.  Some of them declare that we are free to do whatever we want because He is a God of love and therefore will never judge us no matter what.  These ministers fail to see God’s loving, disciplining hand in our difficulties, feeding the “root of bitterness”.

Other preachers declare that God is a God of love, and therefore if we follow Him, we will be showered with blessings.  These ministers see suffering not as discipline, but as a failure on our part to love God, thus making God’s love conditional.  This also feeds the “root of bitterness” because there is no way we can meet God’s standard.  We will always fall short and without grace all we can experience is frustration.  There will never be enough material blessing to keep us satisfied under this theology.

However, we do need Jesus as Savior, and we do need Jesus as Lord, and we also have Jesus as Savior and Lord.  We need to live like God is “at hand” and not “far away.”  R.C. Sproul used to say Christians need to live “coram Deo” which means “before the face of God” in Latin.  Always knowing that we live in God’s presence, that He is “at hand” reminds us not only of our need for Him as Lord and Savior, but also that He more than meets our need because He is a perfect Lord and Savior.

So, when Jeremiah tells us that God asks, “Am I a God at hand, declares the LORD, and not a God far away?” we can reply that we know we always live coram Deo because He is near.  Only then can we pull up bitterness by its roots and experience true joy in His presence.

Live coram Deo today.

Amen.

[1] Jeremiah 14:13b
[2] Jeremiah 23:17
[3] Jeremiah 23:23